Anthropic's MCP 2026-07-28 spec drops stateful transport for request/response
Anthropic shipped MCP 2026-07-28 across Claude, swapping the bidirectional stateful transport for plain request/response and aligning authorization with production OAuth 2.0 and OIDC. MCP servers can now run on serverless and edge infrastructure and connect to Entra or Okta without workarounds, which removes the long-lived-connection requirement that kept most servers on dedicated hosts. MCP Apps render interactive UI inline in the conversation, a research-preview tunnel reaches servers inside private networks with no public endpoint or inbound firewall rules, and Anthropic puts MCP at 400M monthly SDK downloads.
Source: claude.com ↗
MCP moves from a bidirectional stateful protocol to a request/response model. Servers can now deploy on serverless and edge infrastructure.
Why this matters
- → MCP servers now run on serverless/edge, eliminating dedicated-host requirements
- → Enterprise auth (OAuth 2.0, OIDC) connects to Entra/Okta without workarounds
- → 400M monthly downloads; 950+ servers in Claude directory drive ecosystem scale